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1HE IRISH ISSUE 



BY 



WILLIAM J. M. A. MALONEY, M.D. 

Captain in the British Army 
August, 1914— August, 1916 



THIRD EDITION 
Revised and Amended 



New York 

THE AMERICA PRESS 

173 East 83d Street 

1919 

PRICE TEN CENTS 



CONTENTS 



The Irish Issue 

I. In Its American Aspect 3 

II. In Its English Aspect 12 

III. In Its Irish Aspect 2.2 

IV. In Its " Ulster " Aspect 32 

V. In Its International Aspect 47 



The above articles appeared successively in AMERICA, a 
Catholic Review of the Week, on October 16, 23, and 30, and on 
November 6 and 13, 1918, respectively. 






Copyrighted, 1919, by 
THE AMERICA PRESS 

©CI.A512368 






.ty*> 



The Irish Issue in Its American 
Aspect 

ABOUT 150 years ago the American States, becom- 
ing increasingly self-conscious, felt it to be 
inconsistent with their rights longer to submit to 
colonial bondage. They readily perceived a community 
of interests with Ireland, the oldest ©f England's de- 
pendencies. Not that the American States, 3,000 miles 
from England, had ever experienced the weight of the 
yoke which Ireland, on the threshold of England, 
endured. But in principle the problem confronting the 
two dependencies was identical. " The question in both 
countries," wrote Froude (" English in Ireland," p. 189), 
" was substantially the same ; whether the Mother 
Country had a right to utilize her dependencies for her 
own interests irrespective of their consent." And the all- 
wise Franklin, preparing for the contest which was to 
settle this question for his people, visited Ireland in 1771 
to emphasize to the Irish Patriot party the essential unity 
of American aims with Irish interests. " I found them," 
he records (" Franklin's Works,* VII., p. 557-558) " dis- 
posed to be friends of America in which I endeavored 
to confirm them with the expectation that our growing 
weight might in turn be thrown into one scale and by 
joining our interests with theirs a more equitable treat- 
ment from this nation (England) might be obtained for 



themselves as well as for us." Franklin not only sought 
through Ireland to "weaken England in the impending 
struggle against the American States, he also contem- 
plated an affiliation of Ireland and of Canada with the 
people he represented. His diplomatic mission was fol- 
lowed up by action on the part of the first general Con- 
gress which met in Philadelphia on September 4, 1774. 

For any subject of England to aid America was, of 
course, treason against England. And the American 
Fathers, conscious of the consequences of this crime, 
deemed it their duty to forbid the Island of Jamaica to 
incur the dangers of aiding the Revolution. " The 
peculiar situation of your Island," said the Congressional 
Letter to the Jamaican Assembly, read on July 25, 1775, 
" forbids your assistance." Remoteness from England 
endowed Jamaica with, at least, relative safety. If wise 
discretion was advisable in Jamaica, it might have been 
considered imperative in Ireland, isolated and well nigh 
defenseless at the very gates of England, and therefore in 
a " peculiar situation " to perform vicarious expiation for 
all traitorous colonists. 

But no admonition to caution came from Congress to 
moderate Irish ardor for the American cause. Instead, 
Congress appointed a committee to draft an address " To 
the People of Ireland " which was read on July 28, 1775, 
and which ran as follows : 

We are desirous of the good opinion of the virtuous and 
humane. We are peculiarly desirous of furnishing you with 
the true state of our motives and objects ; the better to enable 
you to judge of our conduct with accuracy and determine the 
merits of the controversy with impartiality and precision. Your 
Parliament has done us no wrong. You had ever been friendly 



to the rights of mankind ; and we acknowledge with pleasure 
and gratitude that your nation has produced patriots who have 
nobly distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and of 
America. 

The judgment sought by Congress from Ireland was so 
unanimous in favor of America that the disastrous effect 
of the Revolution on Irish trade did not prevent " the 
mass of the people, both Catholic and Protestant, from 
wishing success to the patriotic colonists" (Mitchel). 
" Ireland was with America to a man," declared Pitt, the 
" Great Commoner " (Bancroft's " History of the United 
States," vol. VII., p. 194). The people of Dublin pre- 
sented their thanks, and the " Merchants' Guild " gave 
an address of honor to the Earl of Effingham who " re- 
fused to draw the sword against the lives and liberties 
of his fellow-subjects " in America. In Belfast meetings 
were held and money was raised to support the American 
cause. And Grattan boldly referred to America as " the 
only hope of Ireland and the only refuge of the liberties 
of mankind " (" Select Speeches of Grattan," edited by 
Duffy, p. 104). The menace of that "hostility to the 
pretensions of England " which Franklin had sought to 
excite in Ireland, grew aggressively until it proved 
powerful to reinforce American valor in establishing the 
independence of the revolting States. 

The Americans had incited in the Irish a fervor for 
freedom which Lord North and his contemporaries, in 
spite of conciliation, corruption and concession failed to 
calm. It did not evoke a crisis till 1782, and it did not 
make the country a shambles till 1798; but from the first 
it was an ever present danger at the very heart of the 
British Empire and it gravely handicapped the war 



council at Westminster in the conduct of their operations 
against the American revolutionaries. 

But apart altogether from the influence which Ireland's 
attitude exerted upon the fate of the American Revolu- 
tion, England had direct evidence of the Irish share in 
her defeat. 

Practically the first blow in the Revolution was struck 
on behalf of the American rebels by the son of a Lim- 
erick schoolmaster, John Sullivan of New Hampshire, 
who on December 13, 1774, captured the Fort of William 
and Mary. The first stroke at British sea power was 
delivered for America, off Machias, on the coast of 
Maine, in May, 1775, by Jeremiah O'Brien. Richard 
Montgomery of Raphoe and other Irish generals helped 
to lead the American forces in the field ; Andrew Brown, 
an Ulsterman, served as Mustermaster General ; Stephen 
Moylan, brother of the Bishop of Cork, acted as aide-de- 
camp to Washington, and later as Quartermaster General 
to the Forces ; John Barry, formerly of Wexford, 
father of the American navy, scoured the seas ; the 
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick contributed to the revolu- 
tionary treasury $517,000, an immense sum in those days ; 
and men of Irish birth and blood stood high in the 
councils of the revolutionary Government. The famous 
Pennsylvania line, the bulwark of the American defense, 
was called " the line of Ireland," so largely was it formed 
of Irishmen. The New Jersey line " bristled with Irish- 
men." There were Irishmen in every American camp 
and field. In the course of a debate in the Irish House 
of Commons on April 2, 1784, the Hon. Luke Gardiner 
stated : 

I am assured from the best authority that the major portion 

6 



of the American army was composed of Irish and that the Irish 
language was as commonly spoken in the American ranks as 
English. I am also informed that it was their valor determined 
the contest so that England had America detached from her by 
force of Irish emigrants. 

Major General Robertson of the British army in " The 
Evidence as Given Before a Committee of the House of 
Commons on the Detail and the Conduct of the American 
War" (London, 1785), is recorded as testifying under 
oath that the American General, Henry Lee, informed 
him that " half the rebel Continental army were from 
Ireland." 

In 1779 Count Arthur Dillon, the son of an Irish noble- 
man in the service of Louis XVI., addressed to the 
French War Office a petition on behalf of all the Irish 
soldiers in France craving that they be allowed to go to 
fight for American freedom. The petition being granted, 
he sailed from Brest with 2,300 Irish troops. In con- 
formity with the American plan of campaign, Dillon was 
directed to attack British strongholds in the West Indies. 
He and the other Irishmen, the very van of the forces 
sent from France, soon paralyzed British power in the 
West Indies and captured there, bases of British activity 
against America. Presently, Count Arthur Dillon was 
Governor of St. Christopher ; Lieutenant Colonel Thomas 
Fitzmaurice, Governor of St. Eustasia, and Lieutenant 
Colonel H. D. Dunn, Commandant of the Island of 
Granada. 

The Irish died on the field, languished in the British 
prison-hulks in the harbor of New York, lived maimed, 
and were branded traitors, that America should be free. 
And when the Declaration of Independence was issued 



among those who signed it were: Smith, Taylor, and 
Thornton, of Irish birth ; McKean, Read, and Routledge, 
of Irish parentage; Carroll and Lynch, grandsons of 
Irishmen ; and Hancock and Whipple, of Irish descent on 
the maternal side. Well might George Washington 
Parke Custis, the adopted son of the Father of the United 
States, say to his countrymen : 

The Shamrock should be entwined with the laurels of the 
Revolution. Americans, recall to your minds the recollections of 
this heroic time when Irishmen were your friends, and when in 
the whole world we had not a friend beside. The rank grass had 
grown over the grave of many a poor Irishman who had died for 
America, ere the Flag of the Lilies floated in the field by the 
Star-Spangled Banner. 

The triumph of the American cause had the conse- 
quence in Ireland which the American Fathers had 
humanely foreseen in the case of Jamaica. The Irish 
share in that triumph induced a very natural resentment 
in England, to which the proximity of America's chief 
and most jubilant accomplice afforded an occasion and 
an opportunity for leisurely satisfaction. Hence we find 
General Abercromby, the penitent chief of the British 
Forces in Ireland, writing of the '98 rebellion : " Every 
cruelty and crime that could be committed by Cossacks or 
Calmucks had been committed in Ireland by the Army 
and with the sanction of those in high office." After the 
rebellion of 1867, John Stuart Mill (Pamphlet, "Eng- 
land and Ireland") felt sorrowfully impelled still to con- 
fess : " Short of actual depopulation and desolation and 
the direct enslaving of the inhabitants little was omitted 
in Ireland which could give a people cause to execrate its 
conqueror." Americans may gage the bitterness of Eng- 

8 



land's resentment by the long persistence of her hostility 
to America, in spite of the conciliatory efforts of the best 
statesmen of both countries ; and its continued action in 
Ireland was demonstrated in May, 1916, by the brutality 
of the executions of the Irish rebels, then daily occurring 
in Dublin, a brutality which led the doyen of American 
literature, a sincere friend of England, William Dean 
Howells, publicly to protest that mercy was still an at- 
tribute of justice. 

The triumph of America imposed another and a greater 
burden upon Ireland. Economic conditions, unrelieved 
by a resentful England, and, in part, imposed by her, to- 
gether with the lure of freedom, converted Ireland into a 
nursery for the great American Republic, and depleted 
Ireland not only of her man power, but also of the 
resources and energies absorbed in training citizens to 
the greater honor and glory of the United States. In the 
last seventy years the population of Ireland has sunk 
from *8,i75,i24 to 4,390,219; over 6,000,000 people have 
left her shores ; and the vast majority of these sailed for 
America. 

The success of the American Revolution forewarned 
the Government of England and taught them successfully 
to resist its repetition elsewhere. So Ireland's task be- 
came more formidable, while she grew physically less able 
to accomplish it. In other words, America's triumph 
immeasurably increased the odds against Ireland. A 
striking example of this result is visible at present when 
Ireland is in possession of an English army of occupation 
which musters only half the number of the Irish born 
who fell in the American Civil War. 



* Census reports 1841 and 1911. 



But in 1776, a new principle was forever established in 
the world, a principle that was assumed to be self-evident, 
the principle of the absolute and equal natural rights of 
man, rights derived from God alone. This principle was 
graven on Irish minds by America, when Irishmen had 
the honor to contribute greatly to its triumphant vindica- 
tion, on behalf of the citizens of the United States. The 
principle is obviously as applicable to Ireland as it was 
to America ; and Irishmen, in spite of all handicaps have 
never abated their efforts to enforce their right to apply 
it to Ireland. Since the days when she was incited by 
America to assert that right " with the expectation that 
our (America's) growing weight might in turn be thrown 
into one scale . . . that a more equitable treatment 
from this nation (England) might be obtained for them- 
selves as well as for us," Ireland has continuously main- 
tained her right. A succession of patriots, in 1798, 1803, 
1848, 1867, and in 1916, " dared beyond their strength, 
and hazarded against their judgment, and in extremities 
were of an excellent hope " that that right might not 
lapse. More a small nation unaided may not accomplish 
for freedom ; and more is not necessary to establish now 
the unequivocal right of Ireland to the full and free 
application of President Wilson's principle of self- 
determination. 

As many Irishmen have fallen in this war as Ameri- 
cans. Unlike some now specially favored peoples, the 
Irish have fallen fighting only for the Allies' cause. If a 
geographical situation within the Empires of the Central 
Powers be not the only claim to freedom which is now 
valid, the claim of Ireland should be, at least in America, 
on an equality with the claims of other subject nations. 

10 



But, while other nations are fortunately freed, Irish 
leaders are held without form, or trial, or charge, in Eng- 
lish jails ; an alien army occupies Ireland ; martial law 
prevails there ; and the press and the people are held 
incommunicado. Will Americans now recall to their 
minds, as Custis once exhorted them, that heroic time 
when Irishmen were their friends and when in the whole 
world they had not a friend beside? For today, as in the 
days of Grattan, America " is the only hope of Ireland." 
It is, however, a strong and confident hope, for on the 
fate of Ireland rests the whole moral structure of the 
Allied cause, and the warrant of America's President is 
sufficient guarantee for the integrity of that structure. 



II 

The Irish Issue in Its English 
Aspect 

WHEN America, mainly to enforce in Europe her 
cardinal national principle of " government 
only by the consent of the governed," joined 
with England against Germany, unity of moral purpose 
as well as the former identity and unbroken community 
of American with Irish interests, together with the prom- 
inent part which Americans of Irish blood would in- 
evitably play in this country's war efforts, seemed 
morally to require that England should free Ireland. 
England refused. America's first objective in the war 
was the defeat of Germany. To attain it, the maximum 
effort of the Allied strength was needful, and was pro- 
curable only through the completely harmonious asso- 
ciation of America with England. It became, therefore, 
impolitic for America to urge a denied claim upon her 
obdurate associate. England's refusal led the American 
authorities to regard Ireland's demand for freedom as a 
possible cause of discord in American national unity : 
hence, America, the belligerent, proceeded to discourage 
Ireland's demand. 

Powerful influences, both domestic and alien, were 
then brought to bear upon American public opinion, and 
that court, so far as the case of Ireland was concerned, 
virtually abdicated its function, in favor of England. 

12 



Irish witnesses were denied a hearing, or were allowed 
to testify only through England's advocates who, at their 
pleasure, suppressed, altered, or mutilated the Irish 
testimony. The Mansion House Committee, consisting 
of the Nationalist, Sinn Fein, and Labor leaders, pre- 
pared a brief of Ireland's case (June u, 1918), in the 
form of an address to President Wilson, and deputed the 
Lord Mayor of Dublin to deliver it at Washington. Be- 
cause the address to the President was not submitted to 
the approval of the military governor of Ireland, Eng- 
land refused passports for the journey; and when the 
address ultimately reached this country, through Am- 
bassador Page, the American press, with scarcely an 
exception, denied publicity to it. 

These facts are now cited mainly to prove that Eng- 
land was entirely uninfluenced and unhampered in the 
preparation and presentation of her defense against Ire- 
land's claim. The form which that defense took' may, 
therefore, be presumed to be the English aspect of the 
Irish issue, which England desires every American to 
appreciate. And now that Germany is vanquished it is 
surely permissible — and, perhaps, essential to America's 
purpose in the war — to examine this English aspect of 
the Irish issue. 

England alleged: first, that Ireland was too poor to 
exist unaided as well as too weak to live undefended, 
and was in fact at the moment both subsisting on Eng- 
land's bounty and sheltering under the protection of 
England's army and navy; secondly, that the Irish were 
too backward to be competent for self-government, but 
were, nevertheless, through the Irish representatives in 
the British Parliament, allowed to share in the govern- 

13 



ment not only of Ireland, but also of Britain and of the 
Empire; thirdly, that the Irish, being divided into dis- 
cordant groups of Catholics and Protestants, of Ulsterites 
and natives, of Unionists, Nationalists," and Sinn Fein- 
ers, were notoriously incapable of agreeing among them- 
selves as to the form of government they desired, and 
that, therefore, the Irish alone were to blame for. placing 
England, in the interests of peace and order, under the 
necessity of continuing to govern Ireland. At this point 
in the case, in response to a suggestion made by leading 
Americans that to facilitate the free development of 
America's war strength, as well as for other reasons, a 
settlement was desirable and might be possible (Sym- 
posium of American opinion published by the London 
Times April 27, 1917), the Prime Minister of England 
offered on behalf of his Government (Letter from Mr. 
Lloyd George to Mr. John Redmond, May 16, 1917) a 
convention of Irishmen, and later, his pledge that if 
that convention could " substantially agree upon any form 
of government for Ireland, within the Empire, England 
would legalize that agreement." Certain of the Irish 
objected that the rider, " within the Empire," begged 
the whole question at issue. The objection was ignored; 
and England appointed a group of Irish peers and com- 
moners who on April 5, 1918, by a final vote of forty- 
four to twenty-nine, agreed on a plan for the self-gov- 
ernment of Ireland (Official Report of the Proceedings 
of the Irish Convention, p. 172). England, on the 
grounds (1) that the twenty-nine in the minority repre- 
sented the British in Ireland whom the mother country 
could not in conscience condemn to the status of irre- 
dentists, and (2) that the size of the majority denoted 

14 



lack of " substantial " agreement, declined to fulfil the 
Prime Minister's pledge; and, instead, proceeded to 
allege that the Irish issue, being a question solely of 
England's domestic policy, was a British and not an 
Irish question. In proof of this contention, conscription 
of the Irish solely by the English and against the unan- 
imous vote of the Irish representatives in Commons was 
passed on April 17, 1918; therefore, the Irish issue was 
beyond the jurisdiction of American public opinion. 

Lastly Britain asserted that Ireland was an enemy both 
of England and of America, was, moreover, a friend of 
Germany, and was, therefore, a menace, and should be 
outlawed and debarred from justice. In support of the 
last contention (1) certain events of the Rising of 1916 
were disinterred (chiefly Roger Casement's activities and 
the alleged attempt to land arms for the Irish Republi- 
cans made by the S. S. " Auk ") and exposed to the public 
gaze; (2) an ex-police official of Irish birth, lately a 
corporal in the British army, was, first, mysteriously 
produced from an island on the west coast of Ireland 
where he was said to have landed from a German sub- 
marine, and then ostentatiously interned in the Tower 
of London; and, (3) eighty-six of Ireland's leaders 
were suddenly arrested (May 19, 1918) and deported 
to England, without charge or form, under the imputation 
of being concerned in a German plot. 

The first remarkable feature of this English aspect of 
the Irish issue is its irrelevancy. The Irish issue, the 
right of the Irish to " government only by the consent 
of the governed," was neither admitted nor denied: nor 
was it ever even discussed by England. No effort was 
made to prove by geography, or history, by ethnography 

IS 



or tradition, by religion or customs, that Ireland was an 
inseparable part of Britain. So soon after the 1916 Re- 
bellion, England could not credibly allege that the Irish 
did not desire freedom; nor was there available such 
evidence of Irish content with things appertaining either 
to this world or to the next, and derived from English 
rule, as would condone that rule in Ireland. In brief, 
the morality of the English occupation of Ireland was 
not defended. Would it be permissible to infer that the 
English occupation of Ireland is morally indefensible? 
It was not on the grounds of the morality but of the 
expediency of that occupation that sanction for it was 
sought by England from America. In 1914, when Ire- 
land was hailed by England's Foreign Secretary, Grey, 
" as the one bright spot in the darkness of war," when 
Ireland's war efforts rivaled England's, America, at that 
time a neutral spectator, observed that Ireland was then, 
no less than she now is, denied her freedom; and was, 
besides, commonly subject to that Zabernism which Mr. 
Lloyd George later excused as arising from " the malig- 
nant stupidities of the War Office." The Auk, in 
1916, failed where a Danish S. S., renamed the 
Fanny, and chartered by the Carsonites, had succeeded 
in 1914. On April 26, of that year, the Fanny landed at 
Larne 50,000 rifles, purchased from the Deutsche Muni- 
tionen und Waff en Fabrik, and shipped from Hamburg; 
and the Germans, thereby encouraged, started, in the fol- 
lowing August, the world war that has just come to an 
end. 

Carson's activities were the incentive to Casement's. 
America, the reluctant belligerent, has doubtless judged 

10 



Carson: America, the America of Nathan Hale, has 
doubtless judged Casement also. 

The allegation that Ireland is hostile to America was 
too vaguely put to permit or to require refutation. Un- 
like the Poles, the Czechs and Slovaks and others now 
much favored, no Irish can be accused of fighting in the 
German army. The fewness of the Irish prisoners in 
Germany who are stated to have harkened to Casement 
is in itself proof of Ireland's loyalty to the Allied cause. 
The English royal princes and Houston Chamberlains in 
the German service far outnumbered the suborned starv- 
ing Irish captives. 

Friendship with Germany (except amongst those 
Ulsterites who, in 1914, invoked the aid of that great 
" Protestant Prince," the Kaiser) was, and is, of neces- 
sity, non-existant in an Ireland whose chief link with 
Germany is hateful memories of Hessians and Hano- 
verian kings. Ireland alone in all the world afforded 
organized combatant aid to France in the Franco- 
Prussian war. Even the British confess that 200,000 of 
the 4,000,000 people of Ireland (five per cent of the 
total population, and at least two-thirds of the available 
men of military age) voluntarily enlisted to fight Ger- 
many. The casualties inflicted by Germany on the Irish 
troops far exceeded in number those inflicted upon the 
troops of the 110,000,000 people of America. After the 
United States, Ireland was the chief source of England's 
food supply, the chief defence against the starvation of 
England by the German submarine. Every Irish tax- 
payer contributed shilling for shilling with the British 
taxpayer in meeting the costs of the war against Ger- 
many. And the almost complete destruction — even to 

1? 



the final tragedy of the S. S. Leinster — by the German 
submarine, of all ships plying from Irish ports, ships 
Irish-manned — these discreetly unemphasized things are 
surely no evidence of friendship with Germany. 

Concerning the German plot, the Irish pointed out that 
the former police official, the alleged submarine pas- 
senger, had landed not from a submarine collapsible, but 
from a Ford collapsible boat, made in the city of Cork : 
and his trial for treason, in London, was not secret 
enough to hide the fact that he had nothing German to 
reveal. It was also pointed out that the Irish revolution- 
ary leaders, imprisoned in England, at the bare announce- 
ment of the plot, were, during the time that the plotting 
was alleged to have occurred in Ireland, actually held in 
English jails, because of their part in the rising of 1916. 
Lord Wimborne, the Viceroy during whose administration 
the plotting was alleged to have taken place in Ireland, 
stated from his place in the British House of Lords, be- 
fore the plot was announced, that the Irish were not pro- 
German, but pro-Irish (November 15, 1917). After the 
plot was announced, he denied the existence of any such 
conspiracy. And from then till now England has disclosed 
no credible evidence of the alleged plot and has declined 
not only to bring to trial, but even to charge, the alleged 
plotters. Under the circumstances is the conclusion that 
the alleged plot was bogus, unwarranted? Would it be 
right to contrast (1) the grounds of expediency wh'<^ 
England used to justify the military occupation of a help- 
less Ireland thus alleged to be friendly to the enemy, 
Germany; with (2) the grounds of expediency which 
Bethmann-Hollweg with frank brutality used to justify 

18 



Germany in the occupation of a helpless Belgium alleged 
to be friendly to the enemy, England ? 

Nations in being vanquished are made poor and weak 
and are kept so to keep them subject. As a further mili- 
tary precaution, conquered peoples are degraded, divided, 
and colonized by the victor. The first four points in the 
English aspect of the Irish issue seem chiefly the stereo- 
typed and tragic consequences of usurpation, disguised 
by time, and perverted in origin. These four points 
sufficed both to condemn German usurpation in Poland 
and to justify English usurpation in Ireland. The colo- 
nists whom Germany had planted in Alsace-Lorraine 
served only to strengthen the French demand for restitu- 
tion : the colonists England had planted in Ireland — now 
in many cases more Irish and anti-English than the 
Irish — served only to strengthen the English denial 
of restitution there. England correctly characterized 
as a temporary expedient of evident insincerity, the 
German decree of December 8, 1916, which ap- 
pointed a Polish Council and deputed to that Council 
the drafting of a plan for the self-government of 
Poland within the German Empire: England on May 
16, 1917, announced that she was about to appoint 
an Irish Convention and to depute to that Convention the 
drafting of a plan for the self-government of Ireland 
within the British Empire. Germany set up a provi- 
sional Polish Government and requested it to conscript 
the Poles ; and Germany set up a provisional Esthonian 
Government and requested it to conscript the Esthonians : 
for which England rightfully denounced Germany. But 
without even this Teutonic concession to nationality, the 
British enacted conscription for Ireland. Would it be 

19 



just to conclude that the Irish issue in its English aspect, 
as succesfully presented to the American people by Eng- 
land, differed only in nomenclature from the Polish, Es- 
thonian, Alsatian and Belgian issues in their German 
aspect, as successfully presented by Germany to the Ger- 
man people? 

This English aspect of the Irish issue might be thought 
to be merely the war-fevered fancy of irresponsible Eng- 
lish propagandists. But present conditions in Ireland show 
that the conduct of the English in Ireland both conforms 
to the English propaganda here and duplicates the con- 
duct of Germany towards her subject peoples. And this 
English conduct towards Ireland is not a new develop- 
ment, induced by the stress of war, in a sorely beset Eng- 
land. While Britain, abroad, was championing the cause 
of Greece and Hungary, Italy, and Poland, just as today 
she is championing the cause of — among others — the 
Czecho-Slovaks, Esthonians, Arabians and Jugo-Slavs, 
and is insisting upon self-determination for the German 
African Askari, England, at home, held, as she now 
holds, Ireland from freedom. When circumstances com- 
pelled, England gave Ireland doles of liberty, and with- 
drew or reclaimed them when circumstances permitted. 
In 1782, England, in difficulties with America, France and 
Holland yielded to Ireland legislative independence for- 
ever; in 1800, England, in fewer difficulties, destroyed the 
independent Irish Parliament. Catholic emancipation in 
Ireland was, and is vitiated by Protestant ascendancy rule. 
Nearly 100 separate Coercion acts, together with periods 
of martial law, have efficiently filled the void in the Eng- 
lish system of governing Ireland, left by the repeal of the 
penal laws. The Irish, in 1903, were partially restored to 

20 



their own land, by the aid of money borrowed in Eng- 
land, and repaid with interest by the Irish. The Home 
Rule act, passed in 1913, has since remained securely in- 
terned among inoperative British statutes. 

It is not necessary further to multiply instances to 
prove that the English aspect of the Irish issue has ever 
been what it now is, the conventional aspect of a con- 
queror to a conquered people ; and if today be any guide 
to the morrow, England intends to continue to apply to 
Ireland, so far as America will permit, those standards 
which another arbitrary power was also wont to follow 
in dealing with subject peoples now happily free. Amer^ 
ica, the belligerent, might permit an associate much that 
is fortunately not American either in principle or in pur- 
pose, even the English aspect of the Irish issue, because 
of the necessity to substitute the American for the Ger- 
man aspect of certain other national issues deemed more 
urgent. The armistice is now signed : these issues are in 
process of satisfactory rectification : the substitution of 
the American for the English aspect of the Irish issue, 
the institution in Ireland of government only by the con- 
sent of the people, is now in order. 



21 



Ill 

The Irish Issue in Its Irish 
Aspect 

AT the time of the American Revolution the states- 
men of America and of Ireland had attained to 
almost the same eminence of political concep- 
tion, and in their zeal to give to their respective peo- 
ples the principle of popular freedom, they had gone 
much further than any contemporary nation. One hun- 
dred and forty years later America is the arbiter of the 
world's destinies, and Ireland seems to be the last, if not 
the least, of the world's concerns. The question in- 
evitably arises : Has Ireland affirmed her right to free- 
dom by all the ways a conscious nationality can affirm 
that right? The answer can be found in Ireland's his- 
tory only. The events of that history are indisputable 
and undisputed. Such of these events as resulted from 
Irish action reflect the Irish aspect of the Irish issue. 
Ireland can ask no fairer presentation of her case than 
that which the Irish themselves have offered at the court 
of history. And America can seek no better guide to 
the nature of the Irish issue, and its Irish aspect, than 
that which history affords of the period from the end of 
the American War of Independence to the present day. 

At the very beginning of that period, the first great 
affirmation of Irish nationality occurred : an Irish volun- 
teer army, over 100,000 strong, was organized (1782). 

22 



With this army Ireland was content to accept from Eng- 
land a parliament endowed with " perpetual " legisla- 
tive independence for Ireland. The mass of the Irish 
people were excluded from direct participation in this 
parliament; but, as it represented Irish, as distinguished 
from English, rule, Ireland welcomed it, although 
America, more wise, had declined in 1778 a similar Eng- 
lish substitute for freedom. " In 1783, a haughty peti- 
tion was addressed to the throne on behalf of the Roman 
Catholics by an association styling itself a Congress. 
No man could suppose that a designation, so ominously 
significant, had been chosen by accident; and by the 
court of England it was received, as it was meant, for 
an insult and a menace. What came next?" (De 
Quincey, " The Irish Rebellion," " Essay in Life and 
Manners," Boston, 1851, p. 127). Next came the 
suborning of the planters and placemen of Ireland's 
Parliament, till, under duress and largess, they yielded 
their function to the English Government. The Union 
of the Irish to the English Parliament was not legalized 
before 1800, but it had then long been effective. De- 
frauded of their perpetual legislative independence by 
extra-constitutional means, the Irish sought independence 
by arms (1798) ; and insurrections followed which were 
not finally crushed until 1803. The Union and the proc- 
ess of crushing the rebellions, deprived Ireland both of her 
planter statesmen and of her republican revolutionaries: 
and for a time Ireland was stunned and still and leader- 
less. Then O'Connell appeared with his scrupulously 
constitutional agitation to amend the laws by which 
Catholics were degraded to an inferior political status, 
an agitation that was as essentially an expression of a 

23 



demand for political freedom as was the militant dem- 
onstration of the Volunteers, which extorted the 1782 
Parliament. Peel explained his conversion to the cause 
of emancipation on the ground that the peasants of 
Clare, who he had believed were serfs, were the pos- 
sessors of the " true and unbreakable spirit of freemen." 
Wellington frankly admitted that he supported the meas- 
ure because " the Irish regiments were cheering for 
O'Connell." Then the Irish people, with the sympathy 
of Ledru Rollin in France and of President Tyler in 
America, put forward a constitutional demand for the 
repeal of the Union (1832-1844), for the return of 
their legislative independence, for the resumption of 
that path to freedom which they had trod in the days 
when Franklin and Washington were one with them in 
thought and in purpose. England defeated this consti- 
tutional demand by the unconstitutional imprisonment 
of O'Connell (1844). Led by Smith O'Brien the Irish 
again revolted (1848). Out of the grave of the insur- 
rection of 1848 arose the Fenians, a physical-force party 
pledged to an Irish republic, a party that was defeated 
and dispersed in the risings of 1867. The Church of 
Ireland, mainly a hierarchy of aliens, ministering to less 
than a tenth of the people of Ireland, took a tithe of the 
country's goods. As an instalment of freedom the Irish 
sought the remission of this tribute by the disestablish- 
ment of the Church that legally imposed it. Gladstone 
who enacted the disestablishment in the English Com- 
mons (1868) confessed that it was the Fenians who had 
" rung the chapel bell," and he had legislated fearful of 
that warning. Meanwhile, a movement, through passive 
resistance, strikes and sabotage, to free the peasant from 

24 



the status of chattel and to raise him to the level neces- 
sary for a stable national society, had spontaneously de- 
veloped among the Irish peasantry. The Irish were not 
freed by imperial rescript, as were the " souls " in Rus- 
sia. A long and relentless struggle ensued in Ireland, 
which was virtually ended by the Land Act of 1903. 
While this struggle was waging, the fight for legislative 
independence continued. At Westminster, Parnell stood 
" single handed in the ford to hack and hew an ancient 
parliament till it fell misshapen from his sword." The 
fight he fought enabled his successor, Redmond, to gain 
for Ireland, first, local government for counties in 
county affairs (1898); and, finally, that modified form 
of legislative independence which is called Home Rule. 
In 1912, again in 1913, and yet again in 1914, the British 
Commons passed the Home Rule bill. In 1914, it re- 
ceived the endorsement of King, Lords, and Commons. 
It was then " suspended." The Irish after this final 
lesson in the futility of constitutional endeavor, again re- 
sorted to arms; and the Republic of Ireland was once 
more proclaimed (Easter, 1916). As a climax to this 
period, English-appointed courts, in suits brought by 
Dublin property owners, decreed that damage done in 
the 1916 revolution was legally the act oi an usurping 
government in Ireland. 

Every legislative gain sought or achieved by Ireland 
was in one direction : every gain was the best that was 
obtainable having regard to the circumstances of the 
time: every method, whether constitutional or uncon- 
stitutional, was devised for one end, and was designed to 
overcome the prevailing form of the opposition of Eng- 
land: every leader who sprang to take the place of him 

25 



who fell, or of him who was silenced by execution, de- 
portation, or imprisonment, led the forces of Ireland 
toward the same goal. With constitutionalists and with 
rebels, in peaceful and in forceful methods, in victory 
and in defeat, through changes of leaders, weapons, 
strategy, and tactics, this ultimate purpose of Ireland 
remained clear and invariable. It was, it is, and it will 
always remain, the vindication of the right of Ireland to 
government only by the consent of the governed. 

In this review of Ireland's history, measures initiated 
by the Irish to cement the union with England are not 
mentioned ; for no such measures exist. Indeed, five 
times since the establishment of the American Republic, 
the Irish have attempted by force of arms to found the 
Republic of Ireland. England to this day professes ig- 
norance of the Irish issue in its Irish aspect ; but there 
was always at hand in Ireland, as there now is, an Eng- 
lish army to suppress the realization of the ideal of the 
Republic of Ireland. 

In this review of Ireland's history, measures initiated 
by the Irish and appertaining only to Ulster are not men- 
tioned; for no such measures exist. The Irish leaders 
in this continuous struggle came from all quarters of 
the country : Gavan Duffy, John Mitchel, and John Mar- 
tin were all Ulstermen, as were also Isaac Butt and Roger 
Casement. They belonged to both creeds : O'Connell, 
Meagher, and Pearse were Catholics ; Grattan, Tone, 
Emmet, Fitzgerald, Smith O'Brien, Davis, Mitchel, Mar- 
tin, Parnell and Casement were Protestants. And they 
were drawn from all classes, from Michael Davitt of the 
Irish peasantry to Edward Fitzgerald of the Irish peerage. 
In the ranks, too, all classes, creeds, and provinces loyally 

26 



served. All contributed to the victories and participated 
in their results : Catholic emancipation was the emancipa- 
tion of all by all ; the Protestant Dissenter was freed with 
his Catholic fellow-countryman : the disestablishment of 
the Church of Ireland relieved of the tithe-burden the 
Protestant Nonconformist no less than the Catholic: the 
peasantry of Ulster reached the status of proprietorship 
at the same moment as the peasantry of the other 
provinces : government of county affairs was won for 
Ulster when it was won for the rest of Ireland. And 
all classes, creeds, and provinces have sustained each 
other in the course of the struggle and have shared the 
burdens that could not be removed, the casualties, the 
executions, the imprisonments, the deportations, the evic- 
tions, the starvation, and the emigration. The struggle 
is unequaled in history as a struggle by a united nation 
for national freedom. 

Few nations have suffered such casualties and kept 
their identity; but Ireland is still Irish. The spirit of Ire- 
land's nationality was long sustained by the Irish priest- 
hood. O'Connell founded reading rooms in every vil- 
lage and hamlet to educate his people. Mangan, Davis 
and Duffy, together with the other Young Irelanders. 
roused by their writings that pride of race which his- 
tory bade the Irish remember and which serfdom made 
them forget. Douglas Hyde and his Gaelic League re- 
stored her speech to Ireland, and taught her the glories 
of her ancient literature. Yeats, Synge, AE, and Colum 
wrote the songs and dramas of Irish Ireland. A national 
theater, a thing unknown in England, flourished in Ire- 
land. Pearse and McDonagh in St. Enda's School molded 
the boyhood of Ireland in an Irish mold. Eoin MacNeill, 

27 



and others, made the National University an Irish univer- 
sity. Plunkett and Russell led the Irish farmer to eco- 
nomic independence through cooperation. 'And a spirit of 
dignity, discipline, self-reliance and thrift, an Irish spirit 
worthy of an Irish nation, was fostered and maintained 
among the people, that a free Ireland might be an Irish 
Ireland. 

Since the American Revolution roused men free of soul 
in every land, Ireland in her history has consistently 
shown that she is a nation in the grip of a national ideal, 
the ideal of national freedom. In spite of recurrent 
slaughter, of a prison policy seldom excelled by Tsars, 
and of a depopulation which the Turk has not often 
rivaled and very rarely surpassed, Ireland has not 
wavered from her purpose to be free. There has been no 
frailty of spirit, no lack of energy, no want of determina- 
tion, no dearth of daring, no shrinking from sacrifice, in 
the affirmation of Ireland's right of national freedom. 
Now, at the end of 140 years of dauntless endeavor, when 
Ireland is more unconquerable, more Irish, more free in 
spirit, and more determined to be also free in fact, is it 
likely that anything short of the full application of Presi- 
dent Wilson's principles will satisfy the indomitable peo- 
ple of Ireland? 

Circumstances prospered America, but not Ireland; 
and the legal, social and intellectual censorship which 
England exerts over the English-speaking world has 
further tended to make America unmindful of the fact 
that the Irish issue in its Irish aspect has always been 
identical with what was once the American issue in its 
American aspect. America now comes mighty from the 
vindication of the rights of subject peoples to national 

28 



liberty. But what will it profit the soul of America if it 
gain the freedom of the whole world and suffer the loss 
of the freedom of Ireland? 

From 1782 to 191 8, England has found it necessary 
on over 100 occasions to resort to coercion acts, suspen- 
sions of the habeas corpus act, martial law, and its 
analogues, to enforce her authority in Ireland. In 1844, 
1881 and 1918 England felt compelled to imprison the 
Irish leaders en masse, in order to secure again for her- 
self executive power in Ireland. In 1798, 1803, 1848, 
1867 and 1916 England had to reconquer Ireland; and 
England now holds Ireland by virtue of an English army 
of occupation, under a military governor. Will not these 
war and siege measures need to be continued until Ire- 
land be free, a nation once again? And if out of the 
war a League of Nations be formed, a league that lacks 
the nation of Ireland, may not its first duty be to aid 
England in Ireland as the Holy Alliance aided Turkey 
in Greece? 

The people of Ireland have, in their isolation, set at 
defiance England, the possessor of an empire greater than 
that of ancient Rome, an empire to which 400,000,000 
are subject, to which the riches of the universe are tribute, 
of which the world's largest navy is guard. When Eng- 
land fought against, and when England fought alongside, 
the United States ; when England was allied with other 
nations of Europe against Napoleon; when England 
approved of that Alliance against freedom that was pro- 
fanely styled Holy ; when England with France and Pied- 
mont fought Russia in the Crimea to save the unspeak- 
able Turk; when England morally supported Prussia 
against France in the Franco-Prussian War; when Eng- 

29 



land, as Ribot lately disclosed, entered an entente with 
Germany against France and Russia; when England 
allied herself with Japan against Russia ; when England 
with France and Spain united against Germany at Alge- 
ciras ; when England was associated with the victorious 
powers of the world — during all these mutations of the 
international hatreds and friendships of England, the peo- 
ple of Ireland were pursuing their immutable purpose of 
national freedom. If a League of Nations that lacks the 
nation of Ireland be now created, will not Ireland con- 
tinue dauntlessly to pursue her purpose till a free Ireland 
be recognized as an essential member of that league, or 
until the league itself shall become a thing of the past, 
and be numbered in history among the fleeting alliances 
of England? 

While America has grown to greatness ; while French 
empires and republics have arisen and passed away ; 
while Belgium, Greece, Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, and 
Serbia, have been born as nations and have developed 
into powers; while Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Austrian, 
Turkish, Mexican and Brazilian empires have fallen to 
pieces ; while the German empire was being created, 
exalted, and destroyed ; while Norway seceded from 
Sweden, and Iceland from Denmark, Ireland was per- 
sistently fighting her fight for freedom. Will not Ireland 
continue to fight on till she be free, or till the empire that 
is England be overtaken by the doom that is the fate of 
empires ? 

But if Ireland now be paid her earned share of that 
freedom which is being squandered on the promiscuous 
and chance acquaintances of war — freedom which Red- 
mond and Kettle and "more than half a million Irishmen" 

30 



from Ireland, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zea- 
land, have fought to win ; if Ireland now be given her 
place in the family of nations; if Ireland's leaders be 
deemed worthy to appear alongside the Czecho-Slovaks 
and others at the peace conference; if Ireland now be 
enrolled as a nation in the League of Nations, would not 
America's purpose in the war acquire, what it still lacks, 
absolute and unqualified moral vindication ? Would not 
the plain people of England be glad that at last amends 
had been made for an age-long national crime? Would 
not the foundling nations of the world see in the nation 
of Ireland a promise and a sign that their life of liberty 
was established not upon the precarious tenure of the 
shifting interests of selfish Powers, but upon the firm 
basis of an inalienable, unalterable, and universal right? 
Would not the Irish pilgrims, now risen to greatness in 
every land, become disciples of the new world order, 
apostles of the new world freedom? Would not an Ire- 
land, free to live her own life, to think her own thoughts, 
to write her own message to the world, become again as 
she once was, the center of Celtic culture, a nation of 
teachers and scholars, of messengers of peace and good- 
will to all peoples, even unto the people of England? 



31 



IV 

The Irish Issue in Its "Ulster" 
Aspect 



w 



4 'X^T^ may safely state," writes Van Tyne 
("Loyalists in the American Revolution," p. 
183), "that 50,000 soldiers, either regular or 
militia, were drawn into the service of Great Britain from 
her American sympathizers." These American Loyalists 
were drawn from the adherents of English families such 
as " the Carterets and the Penns that had large financial 
interests in the country " ; from those who " were in re- 
ceipt of salaries as colonial officials " ; from those " whose 
families had so long enjoyed the emoluments of office that 
they formed a class by themselves"; and from British 
military officers, pensioners and their kin (Channing, 
"History of the United States," vol. Ill, p. 362). 

The present-day Ulster Loyalists are composed of Eng- 
lish and Anglo-Irish peers who have large landed and 
financial interests in the country, many of whom, like 
Lord Londonderry, are descended from the men who sold 
the Irish Parliament to England ; of those who, members 
of the vast Irish bureaucracy, are in receipt of salaries as 
Irish officials; of those whose families have so long en- 
joyed the emoluments of office that they form a class by 
themselves ; of certain churchmen ; and of British officers, 
pensioners, and their kin. Some idea of the Loyalism of 
the last class may be gathered from the fact that, even 

32 



during the late war for the freedom of small nationalities, 
in the Sixteenth, the famous Irish division, although 
ninety-five per cent of the men were Nationalists, eighty- 
five per cent of the officers, and all above the lowest 
grades, were Ulsterites or other Unionists (T. P. O'Con- 
nor, House of Commons, March 7, 1917). 

In 1776, the American Loyalists maintained that their 
families had been in possession of the land since its set- 
tlement; that they, as loyal subjects, "trembled at the 
thought of separation from England," which " was as 
necessary to America's safety as a parent to its infant 
children " ; that " they were prosperous because they were 
British " ; that " the country did not want independence " ; 
that the whole agitation " was due to political adventurers 
of the worst type " ; and that " the unfortunate land would 
be a scene of bloody discord for ages " if separated from 
England. " We were formed," said they, " by England's 
laws and religion. We were clothed with her manufac- 
tures and protected by her fleets and her armies " (Van 
Tyne, "The American Revolution," pp. 86 and 87). 

Today the Ulster Loyalists maintain that their families 
have been in possession of the land since the colonizations 
by the Stuarts and Cromwell ; that they tremble at the 
thought of separation from England ; that they are formed 
by England's laws and religion and are protected by her 
fleets and armies ; that Ireland does not want independ- 
ence; that the whole agitation is duetto adventurers of 
the worst type ; that the unfortunate land would be a 
scene of bloody discord for ages if separated from Eng- 
land ; and that the English know better how to govern 
the Irish than the Irish do themselves. " By her sheer 
industry and her connection with England, Ulster has 

33 



developed into the richest of the provinces (of Ireland). 
. . . The people of Ulster love the people of England 
and will not be driven out of the United Kingdom " 
(Lord Londonderry, London Times, April 6, 1914). 

Now, however, there is little dispute in Ireland as to the 
possession of the land : even the peers who assert the 
contrary have been, or are in process of being, peacefully 
bought out by the Irish peasantry, Catholic and Protes- 
tant, Ulsterite and non-Ulsterite, with money lent 
under the terms of the Land acts of 1903 and 1909. More- 
over, Ulster is not exclusively Protestant, for it con- 
tains 690,816 Catholics (45.67 per cent), out of a 
population of 1,581,696; in live 1 of the nine Ulster 
counties Catholics are in the majority; and 17 of the 
33 actual parliamentary representatives from Ulster are 
Nationalists. Besides, the Ulster Protestants are not 
wholly British; there is a considerable admixture 
of descendants of the Huguenots who came to Ulster 
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; and, as the 
Parliamentary returns show, many of the Protestants are 
Nationalists. Further, Ulster is not the richest of the 
provinces ; the governmental ratable value of Leins'ter per 
head is 98 shillings ; of Ulster only 72 shillings. a The pop- 
ulation of Ulster fell from 2,389,263 in 1861 to 1,581,696 
in 191 1 ; this fall affects every county; and the infantile 
mortality, the best index of civic institutions, is appall- 
ing in the stronghold of Loyalism, Belfast, where it. 
chances to be higher in the Protestant than in the Cath- 
olic sections. Ulster so far from glorying in citizenship 
of the British Empire, led, even as late as 1910, in the 
emigration from Ireland (Mr. John Redmond, London, 



1 Roman Catholics in Cavan, 81.46%; Donegal. 78.93%; Monaghan, 
74.6S%: Fermanagh, 56.18%; Tvrone. 55.39% (OfhVial Report of llie 
Proceedings of the Irish Convention, 1918, p. 78). 2 Ibid., p. 124. 

34 



March i, 1912). Nevertheless, there are many prosper- 
ous Protestants in Ulster ; and they are nearly all Loyal- 
ists. 

When America was still a colony, " Protestant dis- 
senters, descendants of the men who had held London- 
derry, went in great numbers to America, where they be- 
came the most irreconcilable of those who sought separa- 
tion from England " (" Ireland Today," p. 82, reprinted 
from London Times, 191 3) ; and when America was 
fighting for freedom from England, these irreconcilable 
separatists, the Protestant Ulsterites, produced American 
leaders like Generals Richard Montgomery and Andrew 
Brown. The Irish Volunteers in 1782, assembling at 
Dungannon in Ulster, and consisting in goodly proportion 
of Protestant Ulsterites, extorted from England " per- 
petual " legislative independence for Ireland. In the '98, 
Protestant Ulsterites did some of the best fighting for the 
rebel cause. When the Ulster Protestant brotherhood 
with Britain was 140 years closer than it is today, 
the chief question in Ulster was the independence of Ire- 
land. Since those days there has been an apostolic succes- 
sion of Ulster Protestants to lead the National cause in 
Ireland. But, nevertheless, in 1913, Lord Londonderry 
and kindred peers, with certain among the manifestly 
prosperous in Ulster, pledged themselves by covenant to 
resist partial legislative independence (Home Rule) for 
Ireland, set up an Ulster provisional government in Bel- 
fast, raised a volunteer corps to support that government, 
and thus asserted their right to rule Ireland on behalf of 
the Empire. 

" I sav here solemnly," announced one Ulster Loyalist 
who, in 1916, was rewarded with the position of Solicitor- 
General of Ireland, " that the day England casts me off, 

35 



I will say, ' England I I will laugh at your calamity, I will 
mock when your fear cometh ' " (Belfast, May 23, 1913). 
And another noteworthy Ulster Loyalist wrote in the 
Irish Churchman (Nov., 191 3) : 

It may not be known to the rank and file of Unionists that 
we have the offer of aid from a powerful Continental monarch, 
who, if Home Rule is forced on the Protestants of Ireland, is 
prepared to send an army sufficient to release England of any 
further trouble in Ireland by attaching it to his dominion, be- 
lieving, as he does, that if our King breaks his coronation oath 
by signing the Home Rule bill, he will, by so doing, have for- 
feited his claim to rule Ireland. And should our King sign the 
Home Rule bill, the Protestants of Ireland will welcome this 
Continental deliverer as their forefathers, under similar circum- 
stances, did once before. 

So some of the prosperous Ulster Loyalists seemed de- 
termined to maintain their sway in Ireland, even at the 
cost of transferring their loyalty from England. 

To rouse the Ulster Loyalists, when Home Rule ap- 
peared imminent, the Rt. Hon. Walter Long, M. P., came 
from London to exhort them " to defend themselves by 
their own right arms and with their own stout hearts " 
(Newtownards, September 26, 1912). Sir F. E. Smith, 
M. P., also came from London, with the cry of " To your 
tents, O Israel! " (Ballyclare, September 20, 1913). And 
Sir Edward Carson, with his lieutenant, Captain Craig, 
proclaimed that the Ulsterites " would fight to the last 
ditch, to the last man." The distinguished Ulster Protes- 
tant to whom was deputed the task of writing the life of 
Carson, states: 

The young men of Ulster . . . were not prepared to die in 
any ditch, first or last, in order to prevent the enactment of the 
Home Rule bill, and a reputable number of them were positively 

36 



prepared to fight for its passage. Intimidation, ranging from 
threats of social ostracism to threats of dismissal from employ- 
ment, was used to induce them to sign the covenant or join the 
Ulster Volunteers. There was talk of boycotting all Protestant 
Home Rulers, and there was an outburst of ill-will among men 
who had previously been on good terms. There were shameful 
scenes of violence in the shipyards, where gangs of infuriated 
Orange louts attacked isolated Catholic or Protestant Home 
Rulers and subjected them to acts of outrage and brutality 
which cannot be fitly described (" Sir Edward Carson," by St. 
John G. Ervine, p. 56). None of the business men of Ulster, old 
or young, had any taste for rebellion. They certainly had not 
the appetite for insurrection that their fathers had in 1798 
(loc. cit., p. 57). 

No matter how it was in Ulster, there was no doubt of 
the feeling in England, where the following covenant was 
widely circulated for signature : 

I, , shall hold myself justified in taking or supporting 

any action that may be effective to prevent it (the Home Rule 
act) being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent 
the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people 
of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom. 

Subscriptions were sought in England to sup- 
port any action that might be effective. Long lists of 
signers and subscribers appeared at frequent intervals in 
the London Times and Morning Post during the spring 
and summer of 1914. The lists comprised the names of 
Dukes like Bedford, of Earls like Denbigh, of Bishops 
like Boyd Carpenter, of Barons, Baronets, Knights and 
lesser personages ; of generals such as Roberts, of ad- 
mirals such as Beresford, and of their subordinates in the 
military and naval services ; of financiers and of others 
with industrial and political purpose, or with social ambi- 

37 



tion. Sir Edward Carson, who is not an Ulsterman, who 
has no discoverable relatives in Ulster, who never repre- 
sented any Ulster constituency, and who was Solicitor- 
General for England from 1900 to 1906, was chosen to 
head the Loyalists of Ulster. Under him was an English- 
man, General Richardson. Another Englishman, Sir F. 
E. Smith, came over to act as galloper to Carson. Re- 
tired English officers drilled the Carson army. General 
Sir Henry Wilson, who is now head of the British War 
Office, organized it. Generals French and Gough, in com- 
mand of the British forces at the Curragh, resigned, or 
threatened to resign, with the officers of their command, 
if called upon by the British Government to march 
against their fellow-officers, Protestants and Britishers, 
of the Carson army. Berlin dispatches (March 31, 1914) 
informed the world that 50,000 rifles and 1,000,000 rounds 
of ammunition, " valued at £800,000," had been shipped 
from Hamburg on March 20. " It is assumed that the 
rifles are for Ulster," said the London Times of April 1. 
The Fanny, with the rifles aboard, was soon reported as 
passing through the Kiel Canal. On April 2j the Times 
was able to announce that the Fanny, having successfully 
eluded the entire and forewarned British navy, had peace- 
fully landed its munitions in Ulster and peacefully de- 
parted. Among British politicians, Lord Milner, Lord 
Robert Cecil and all prominent Imperialists and Union- 
ists, signed the covenant. The people of Ulster, declared 
the Rt. Hon. Joynson Hicks, M. P., at Warrington, Eng- 
land, on December 6, 1913, had behind them the Unionist 
party. Behind them zvas the God of battles. In His name 
and their name, he said to the Prime Minister, " Let your 
armies and batteries fire. Fire if you dare. Fire and be 

38 



damned." An English peer, Lord Willoughby de Broke 
(Norwich, November 13, 1913), publicly announced: 
" We are enlisting, enrolling and arming a considerable 
force of volunteers who are going to proceed to Ulster to 
reinforce the ranks of Captain Craig and his brave men 
when the time comes." 

With a pure and avowed passion to liberate from pend- 
ing partial Irish rule their brothers in Ulster, their Protes- 
tant co-religionists, their fellow-citizens in the United 
Kingdom, their co-heirs in the British Empire, the Impe- 
rial aristocracy, the Imperial army, the Imperial navy, 
and the Imperial politicians of England, fomented in Ire- 
land the act of revolution, and, in England, publicly 
aided and abetted it. And British " jurists, professors, 
editors, statesmen, warriors, and even scientists were pro- 
lific in finding reasons for the act before it was com- 
mitted." 

The British Imperialists who organized Carsonism had 
previously been busy in the Boer War, in the liberation 
of Protestant Britishers from the thrall of Protestant 
Burghers. According to the Englishman, Mr. H. G. 
Wells, " that sort of British Nationalism that is subsi- 
dized by rich Tories, international financiers and Ulster 
lawyers who are neither good Irish nor good English, 
where patriotism is really ■ Britain for the British ex- 
ploiter,' " is " sham nationalism " (Nezv Republic, No- 
vember 23, 1918). A Home Rule Ireland would have 
been an Ireland without economic or judicial or politi- 
cal or any other independence, an Ireland more sub- 
ject to Britain than is Canada or any of Britain's self- 
governing dominions. Hence the avowed concern for 

39 



the religious, national and imperial rights of the people of 
Ulster, which was used to sanctify British designs in 
Ireland, scarcely disguises the fact that a most unjust 
and pernicious enterprise was undertaken in England to 
support in Ireland a revolution without legitimate motive. 
It may be recalled that in 1848 Bismarck, in the Reich- 
stag, characterized the war of that year in Schleswig-Hol- 
stein, fomented by the German States, as " a most unjust, 
frivolous and pernicious enterprise, undertaken to support 
a revolution without legitimate motive." But he subse- 
quently planned his autocratic German Empire and in the 
meantime Denmark's King had bestowed a democratic 
constitution on the Danish people. Bismarck in 1862 
founded his first remonstrances to the Danish Govern- 
ment explicitly upon its too democratic character. At 
least one contemporary writer stated (Varnhagen von 
Ense, Tagebucher, vol. XIII, p. 428)-: "What Austria and 
Prussia seek at the hands of Denmark is not more regard 
to the Germanism of Schleswig-Holstein, they do not 
care much about that. But the anti-German Ministry at 
Copenhagen is democratic ; they want a reactionary one. 
That is the root of the matter." So the incentive of Im- 
perialism together with the fear of an active democracy 
on his threshold, led Bismarck to say to himself, as he 
confessed at Friedrichsruhe, May 26, 1895, that Schles- 
wig-Holstein must be German.. Hazen ("Alsace-Lor- 
raine under German Rule") and others have likewise 
shown that the military and profiteering need of German 
Imperialism, together with the dread of the democ- 
racy of France, was the real and dominant incentive to 
the German lust for Alsace-Lorraine. 

40 



With Mr. Balfour's Ministry, which included Carson, 
Long, Bonar Law and others who were later to become 
covenanting Carsonites, the British Imperialists suffered 
defeat in 1906, owing to the aftermath of the Boer War 
and the attempt to introduce Imperial preference. In 
their place a Liberal-Labor-Nationalist coalition appeared 
which conferred old-age pensions and government insur- 
ance upon the working classes, reinforced the power of 
labor unions, began to reclaim the feudal estates of Eng- 
land for the people, and disestablished the State Church 
in Wales. To accomplish these reforms, it was necessary 
to deprive the House of Lords of its summary veto over 
the popular will ; which was safely accomplished. " For 
good or for evil," wrote in these days Sir F. E. Smith, the 
future Carson galloper, the future Attorney-General of 
England, " we are governed by a democracy. The ap- 
parent tendency is to extend rather than to restrict the 
popular character of our government. This country will 
remain democratic unless the tendency ... be ar- 
rested by civil convulsions " (" Rights of Citizenship," 
p. 22). The Imperialists failed by constitutional means to 
control this tendency in two successive elections within 
one year. They had lost the power to veto the will of 
the people in the House of Lords ; but, making the Home 
Rule bill both an occasion and an excuse, they provoked 
civil convulsions in Ireland, and conveyed that veto power 
safely to a chapel of ease in Ulster, where they created 
Carsonism to be its armed guard. They seduced the Im- 
perial army and navy so that arbitrary power opposed 
the enforcement of a statute of the democratic govern- 
ment of Britain. " The Government which gave the order 
. . . to enforce the law in Ulster would run a great 

41 



risk of being lynched in London," announced the leader of 
the Unionist party, Mr. Bonar Law (London, June 18, 
1912), a hint to incite that mob and to terrorize its indi- 
cated victims. The Rt. Hon. Joynson Hicks, M. P., 
daring and damning, in the name of the God of battles 
and of the Unionist party, the democratic government of 
England, disclosed the forces supporting his leader. And 
the armed volunteers raised in England by Lord Wil- 
loughby de Broke likewise effectively tended to restrict 
the popular character of government in England. The 
British incentives to Carsonism were not only the military 
and profiteering needs of Imperialism in Ireland, but also 
the Imperialist dread of democracy in England. 

The annexationist maxim in the days of Frederick the 
Great was : " Seize first and plenty of lawyers will 
justify afterwards." But with the development of the 
" Christian Science " of war, war ceased to be the pur- 
suit of an exclusive military caste and became instead 
a national function. Hence, to unify and strengthen the 
national will to war, the German leaders, planning to 
rob their neighbors, organized appeals to the moral and 
sentimental feelings of the German people. Thus, be- 
fore he proceeded to the conquest of Schleswig-Holstein, 
Bismarck created a popular claim to the coveted terri- 
tory on the ground of colonization by Germans in the 
thirteenth century : fellow-Germans in Schleswig-Holstein 
must be restored to the benefits of Teutonism and of 
German citizenship. The validity of this claim may be 
judged by the fact that on July 26, 1720, England had 
guaranteed perpetual possession of the disputed terri- 
tory to Denmark ; and France had done likewise in 
August 18, of the same year. Bismarck encouraged in 

42 



Denmark the hope that England would intervene, a 
hope in which Denmark entered the war of 1864. As 
Lord Palmerston had no intention of intervening to save 
Denmark, English public opinion on the Schleswig issue 
was made then by Bismarck, as American public opinion 
on the Irish issue is made today by the Carsonites. Lord 
Palmerston was accurately reflecting the popular under- 
standing in England when, as was his habit, he would 
say : " The question of Schleswig is so complicated and 
obscure that only three European statesmen have 
grasped it thoroughly : the first of these, Prince Albert, 
is unhappily dead; the second, a foreign politician, has 
lost his reason; and the third is myself, but I have un- 
fortunately forgotten it." When the time approached 
for the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, German " jurists, 
professors, editors, statesmen, warriors and even scien- 
tists were prolific in finding reasons for the act before 
it was committed" (Hazen, loc. cit. p. 78). Ancient 
Allaman colonizations were recalled ; the descendants 
of the original Teutonic colonists were identified as fel- 
low-Germans, enslaved in France by the Treaty of 
Westphalia (1648); and marked down for liberation, 
for restoration to the religious, national and prospective 
imperial rights of German citizens. And to silence any 
lingering scruple, Treitschke taught : " The Germans 
know how to govern the Alsatians better than the Alsa- 
tians do themselves." 

The complexity and obscurity of these German na- 
tional issues recently vanished. A selectively enlight- 
ened world suddenly learned to appreciate at its true 
value this conventional plea of religious, national and 
imperial rights of German colonists in coveted lands ; 

43 



and to see, at last, that there never was adequate reason 
to regard that plea as other than a most unjust, frivolous 
and pernicious subterfuge of German Imperialism. The 
German Imperialist demonstrably had both in Schleswig- 
Holstein and in Alsace-Lorraine no purpose distinguish- 
able from that which the British Imperialist still has in 
Ireland, and still makes complex and obscure by the 
stereotyped plea of religious, national and imperial rights 
of British colonists in Ulster. The world today has just 
paid the price of refusal to see as they were the things 
of yesterday. Will the world tomorrow need likewise 
to pay the price of refusal to see as they are the things 
of today? 

So long as England governs Ireland, the privileged, 
the parasitic, and the professional Loyalists will exercise 
their religious, national, and imperial right to administer, 
on behalf of the Empire, the satrapy of Ireland. So 
long as these Loyalists control in Ireland the avenues of 
educational, economic, and social preferment, they will 
find adherents among the ignorant and sophisticated, 
the needy and covetous, the servile and ambitious. The 
number and devotion of such adherents were revealed 
in the last great British recruiting campaign, in which 
all the arts of persuasion and menace, intensively applied 
for six months, brought forth from Belfast and all Ulster 
less than 10,000 Loyalists to save the Empire that is 
England in the hour of its extremity. Fifty thousand 
American Loyalists opposed Washington : yet America 
became a great and harmonious nation. Over three million 
German Loyalists form Masaryk's Ulster quota in the 
newly created nation of Czecho-Slovakia. Yet the 
negligible number of Irish Loyalists, in a world where 

44 



the principle of majority rule is the foundation of all 
democracy, is allowed to impose for their Imperial mas- 
ters an insuperable veto to " the government of Ireland 
by the consent of the governed." 

In the negotiation of the Home Rule Act and in the 
deliberations of the Lloyd George convention, the Na- 
tional leaders of Ireland manifested for the religious and 
civil rights of the Loyalist minority a solicitude that 
transcends justice, and that may worthily serve as an 
example to the majority rulers of newly-freed States. 
Outside of its incubation place in Ulster, antagonism of 
Catholic to Protestant, of Irishman to Irishman, does 
not exist in Ireland. Major William Redmond, M.P., 
in his last speech to the British House of Commons, 
before he went to his grave in Flanders, irrefutably 
proved the mutual esteem and affection that united the 
vast armies of Irish soldiers in the trenches of France. 
Dissension in Ireland is incomparably less than dissen- 
sion in England, or France, or Italy; and as it was in 
America in 1776, it is in Ireland today the work of those 
who desire to divide and rule., 

Washington characterized the American precursors 
of the Carson family as " abominable pests of society " ; 
and treated them as traitors. The Virginia House of 
Delegates stigmatized them as " vicious citizens against 
whom vigorous measures should be taken " : and such 
measures were taken. Bismarck replied, when asked 
what he meant to do with his exalted analogue of Car- 
son in Schleswig-Holstein : " It is the right of him who 
rears a cockerel to wring its neck " : and that Carson was 
heard no more. The right of England to her Carson, 
no Irishman will care to contest. 

45 



As soon as the disrupting force of dual allegiance 
ceases to act in Ireland, as soon as Ireland is governed 
only by the consent of the governed, Ulsterite will vie 
with non-Ulsterite in salutary competition to end the 
present exploitation of the poor, the ignorant, the credu- 
lous and the bigoted, to eradicate the existing impieties 
of the social system of Ireland, and to make all men equal 
before the law : that selfish rights may be displaced by 
national duties, and that the life of everyone may con- 
form to the first and greatest of the laws of the nation, 
the law that all Irishmen shall unite to fulfill the work 
of all, the work of the free people of Ireland in the 
federation of the peoples of the world. 



46 



V 

The Irish Issue in Its Interna- 
tional Aspect 

WHEN France under Napoleon menaced the free- 
dom of the world, Alexander I of Russia held 
a position of detachment not unlike that which 
America's President held on December 18, 1916, while 
Germany under the latest Hohenzollern was attempting 
to overwhelm the Allied Powers. Alexander was loath 
to embroil Russia in a struggle between contending 
Powers, whose objects in the war " as revealed by their 
statesmen were virtually the same." But he was not 
unwilling to help to end all war. So in 1804 he laid down 
as a maxim to the English Minister, Pitt, that the peace 
of Europe would never be permanently established 
" until ' the internal order of every country ' should be 
firmly founded on ' a wise liberty as a barrier against the 
passions, the unbridled ambitions, or the madness which 
often drive out of their senses those in whom power is 
vested.' " He proposed that such States as wisely laid 
their foundations in liberty should, on the cessation of the 
war then waging, form a League of Nations, all the 
members of which would guarantee to each the posses- 
sions of each, in order that there might be no " future 
attempts to disturb the general tranquillity'' (Phillips, 
"The Confederation of Europe," London, pp. 34-38). 

47 



At that time Ireland had just passed through the rebellion 
of 1798, the sale of the Irish Parliament by Castlereagh 
to England (1800) and the Emmet rebellion of 1803. 
The Irish issue was the obvious test of England's con- 
ception of " wise liberty." But without either applying 
this test or seeking such an adequate guarantee of Eng- 
land's sincerity as the freedom of Ireland would have 
given him, Alexander entered the war, and was a deter- 
mining, if not the dominant, factor in the overthrow of 
Napoleon. When the cessation of hostilities came, 
although the servitude of Ireland remained as a symbol 
of oppression, a pledge against peace, the plain people 
everywhere " promised themselves an all-embracing 
reform of the political system of Europe, guarantees for 
peace, in one word the return of the Golden Age " 
(Gentz, " Congress of Vienna," quoted by Lipson, " Eu- 
rope in the Nineteenth Century," p. 212). But, 

Great Britain was concerned only with an immediate and 
practical object, the ending of the war. It is clear that the 
English Minister meant that only France should not be allowed 
to disturb the future settlement of Europe by " fresh projects of 
aggrandizement and ambition" (Lipson, loc. cit., p. 212). 

The Peace Congress met at Vienna, and, with the nation 
broker, Castlereagh, acting for Great Britain, resulted in 
" nothing but restorations ; agreements between great 
Powers of little value for the future balance and preser- 
vation of the peace of Europe, and quite arbitrary altera- 
tions in the possessions of the less important States. No 
act of higher nature, no great measure for public order or 
for universal good, which might make up for Europe's 



long sufferings or reassure it as to the future, was forth- 
coming." For the only guarantee of the sincerity of the 
participants was that given, perforce, by France in her 
exhaustion. 

Since then the periodic cessation of war has come so 
often to the world that men have lost count of its 
comings. In every truce, the hopeful have seen again 
the vision of Isaiah, of a world united in peace; and in 
every fresh outbreak of war men have been lured to 
death by rulers who promised to pinion peace with their 
sword. The plain peoples of today in the Allied no less 
than in the American ranks were led to battle, in order 
that the supremacy of right over might should be finally 
vindicated, that small nationalities might thereby be 
freed from the oppression of usurping Powers, and that 
henceforth the free peoples of the world might unite in 
equality as members of a League of Nations, a League 
which would exercise common political sovereignty 
solely to the end that war should forever cease. They 
have won the war, but peace is yet to be won or lost. 
Dominating the Peace Conference are the Government of 
America and the Government of the British Empire. 
America's President before the war, at the acceptance of 
war, during the war, and since the cessation of hostilities 
has unequivocally stated his purpose to seek the final 
elimination of war. Plain peoples of the world believe 
in him, trust in him, but fear for him lest, like Alexander 
I of Russia, his purpose be defeated, so that millions 
of lives must be squandered again to reach this same 
stage on the road to universal peace. And the basis of 
their fear is the symbol, Ireland. 

49 



The task of the conferring Governments is to restore 
and to make permanent the peaceful equilibrium of the 
world. In the past, England has been the center of that 
equilibrium, which when disturbed by Spain, Holland, 
France or Germany led Britain to war : and the disturb- 
ing elements were thereby reduced to balanced propor- 
tions, in leagues, alliances, ententes, and associations. 
England, conqueror of Africa, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, 
and the German colonies; and possessor of Ireland, Can- 
ada, Newfoundland, the West Indies, Australia, New 
Zealand, India, Ceylon and Burmah, has now become 
empress of the world. Yet it is actually proposed that 
she grant self-determination to the world and forego her 
supremacy in favor of a league of which the component 
States, small and great, shall enjoy equality with her 
before the law of nations. In this league each nation 
will arm for domestic order only, and all will contribute 
to a common force that will guarantee the world's peace. 
The unit of State proposed for the league is called a 
nation. It is implicit in the idea of a unit that it should be 
indivisible, self-supporting, and able to sustain its share 
of the common burden. This unit has been further 
qualified as constituted by people " governed only by the 
consent of the governed." 

Among the nations of the world the Irish are unsur- 
passed in the sum of their distinguishing characters of 
speech, race, customs, and traditions. They take his- 
torical precedence over all nations, except the nations of 
Greece and Italy ; they inhabit a country unique in its 
geographical separateness from all others and greater in 
area than Greece, Serbia, Switzerland, .Denmark, Hol- 
land, or Belgium. Ireland contains more people than 

50 



Greece, Switzerland, Finland, Serbia, Denmark, or Nor- 
way. Unless the word nation has lost its traditional 
significance and has become a term of opprobrium con- 
ferred only upon peoples hitherto fighting in the service 
of the Central Empires, Ireland is a nation. The nation- 
hood of Ireland is not dependent upon admission to any 
league of Powers. A league avowedly founded on 
nationhood undermines its own basis by the exclusion of 
Ireland; and its selective character makes of it merely 
a league of rulers, an entangling alliance to embroil peace- 
ful members in all the wars on the seven seas. 

In less than a century, Ireland, in addition to paying 
out of her own taxes the whole of her own cost, has been 
made to pay to the maintenance of the imperial army and 
navy of England a sum of £325,000,000 ($1,725,000,000) 
(Mr. John Redmond, House of Commons, April 11, 
1912). Ireland's annual foreign trade, almost exclu- 
sively monopolized by England, exceeds that of Switzer- 
land, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Greece, or 
Serbia, and almost equals the foreign trade of Denmark 
("Statesman's Year Book," 1913). The exclusion of a 
great and historic nation, which is an indivisible State- 
unit, which even under present conditions is able to pay 
the sum exacted to support the one Imperial navy of the 
world, and which has a yearly foreign trade of $737, 
750,000, would weaken the stability of any aggregation of 
of less compact States, increase the pro-rata burden borne 
by the selected members for the support of the League, 
and deprive the League of a considerable part of the 
world's commerce. 

The inclusion of Ireland as a nation would mean the 
loss to England of her most treasured possession. True, 

51 



a war has just been fought in which English statesmen 
from Sir Edward Grey to Mr. Lloyd George have avowed 
their essential purpose to be the freedom of small nations. 
But in a war between empires a subject nation forms a 
part where each empire is vulnerable, and where the 
victor can conveniently disarticulate the vanquished. A 
subject nation, such as Czecho-Slovakia, that has the 
happiness to have been a component part of a defeated 
and dismembered empire, thereby receives at least titular 
freedom. A subject nation such as Ireland, that has the 
misfortune not to have been a component part of the 
conquered Empire, receives the treatment Ireland is now 
receiving. To give moral sanction to the freeing of Poles, 
Czecho-Slovaks, and other peoples lately subject to Ger- 
many or Austria, either the victorious Empire itself must 
free Ireland or else those other nations which associated 
themselves with England and were privileged to devote 
their lives, their honor, and all they were and had to the 
avowed purpose of the war, must decree the freedom of 
Ireland from England, as in 183 1 the freedom of Belgium 
from Holland was decreed. In any event, the exclusion 
of Ireland must mean the exclusion of England, too, 
from a league of free peoples, of peoples " governed only 
by the consent of the governed." For an England drag- 
ging in chains the nation of Ireland " could not be 
trusted to keep faith within the League or to observe its 
covenants." 

Besides moral sanction, a League of Nations will need 
the sanction of force. 

It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created, as a 
guarantor -of the permanency of the settlement so much greater 

52 



than the force of any nation now engaged in any alliance 
hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no probable com- 
bination of nations could face or withstand it. (January 22, 
1917, President Wilson's "Message to the Senate.") 

Force can be created, but it cannot be thriftily or effec- 
tively applied except through the control of strategic 
bases. Concerning Ireland as a base, the British " Navy 
League " — " from which the German Navy League drew 
its impulse " (Mahan, " America's Interest in Interna- 
tional Conditions," p. 171) — in a Manifesto issued on 
January 10, 1918, stated: 

Before the great war the security of the Irish ports was 
wrongly regarded by the majority of the British people as a 
partisan British interest. The scales fell from our eyes after 
war broke out. A clear vision of the sacrifices of great and 
small nations fighting for freedom revealed the relation between 
Ireland and tvorld trade. The strategic unity of the British 
Isles is a world problem not merely a British interest. The 
trade of Europe with Canada, the United States, the West 
Indies, the Gulf of Mexico, the Panama Canal, the Caribbean 
Sea, all the Republics of South America, all the States of the 
Australian Commonwealth, New Zealand, China, Japan, Russia 
in the Pacific, India, Ceylon, and Africa are dependent directly 
upon the control of Irish seaports and the communications 
behind them. The British people before the war were mistaken 
in regarding Queenstown, Bantry Bay, Valentia, and Lough 
Swilly as merely British interests. Ireland has eighteen har- 
bors, five of them first-class. The best of them face the 
Atlantic Ocean which floats the trade of the world. Friendly 
naval control of Irish harbors by free nations is essential to 
the freedom of the zvorld. The ocean of the air, the surface 
of the sea, and underwater attack or defense will be controlled 
. . . from Irish Western ports. 

Even if the League create a navy so large that the 
burden of its support would strain the loyalty of the 

S3 



members, the strategic position of Japan with her ally 
England, acting from Ireland as a base, would enable 
these Powers together to defy any force that the League 
might bring against them. So long as Ireland is con- 
trolled by England the equilibrium of the world will 
remain centered on her, and a League of Nations will exist 
at her pleasure as an auxiliary to her purpose. Ireland a 

Heligoland of the Atlantic, would menace the Atlantic coast of 
the American Continent from Punta Arenas in Patagonia to 
Quebec. Therefore naval control of Ireland by a naval repre- 
sentative of the free nations of the zvorld is essential to the 
freedom of the world. Ireland is truly the key of the Atlantic, 
a fortress that guards the main trade routes of the world. 
(Loc. cit., Ian. 10, 1918.) 

A free Ireland, as is so eloquently and conclusively shown 
by the British Navy League, is a member essential to any 
League of Nations. It is, indeed, the one indispensable 
member, the member vital to the League, the member 
whose absence would leave undetermined only the 
moment of the League's disintegration, only the name of 
the Power which would next dare to disturb the center of 
the world's equilibrium, the possessor of Ireland. With- 
out a free Ireland, the force of the League cannot control 
the world : without such controlling force there can be no 
League of Nations ; without a League of Nations there can 
be no permanent peace; and without permanent peace 
plain peoples have been privileged to dedicate their lives 
and possessions to what? The freedom of Ireland will be 
the sign of the freedom of the world from war. Is there 
any guarantee that this sign will be given to the world ? 
America, presuming that her associates at least " were 

54 



as candid and straightforward as the momentous issues 
involved required," did not deem it necessary " to assure 
herself of the exact meaning of the note of " acceptance 
of England's Government before the armistice was 
signed. America likewise did not deem it necessary " in 
order that there might be no possibility of misunderstand- 
ing very solemnly to call the attention of " the Government 
of England " to the evident principle which runs through 
the whole American program." It is contained in the 
" Address to Congress " of January 8. " It is the prin- 
ciple of justice to all peoples and nationalities and their 
right to live on terms of liberty and safety with one 
another whether they be strong or weak." Yet even when 
the armistice was being signed England was. affirming, as 
throughout the war England has affirmed, and as she is 
today affirming by all the ways an autocratic empire can 
affirm it, her complete consciousness of the distinct 
national entity — Ireland. In the Peace Conference " the 
good faith of any discussion manifestly depends upon 
the consent " of his Britannic Majesty's Government 
" immediately to withdraw its forces everywhere from the 
invaded territory " of Ireland ; to liberate those whom by 
deportation and imprisonment England has recognized as 
the leaders of the Irish nation ; and to permit the people 
of Ireland freely to determine by plebiscite the form of 
their government. No such guarantee of good faith was 
required from, or proffered by, England : and she 
reserved for discussion, freedom of the seas, the point 
upon which the rest of the peace program pivots. As 
it was in 1814, so in 1918 " it is clear that Great 
Britain was concerned only with an immediate and 
practical object, the ending of the war. The English 
Minister meant that only " Germany " should not be 

55 



allowed to disturb the future settlement of Europe by 
fresh projects of aggrandizement and ambition." 

Just as America enters the Peace Conference, Ireland 
entered the war without guarantees of good-faith from 
England. Ireland had no shipping vainly seeking passage 
through forbidden seas. The only invader on Irish soil 
was England. And Ireland refused to be terrorized into 
war by fear of facing unaided the remote contingency of 
a superimposed invasion by Germany. According to J. I. 
C. Clarke, 1 480,000 Irishmen fought and died for France 
between 1690 and 1792. The only entry on the other side 
of the ledger was the 280 2 Frenchmen lost by Humbert in 
the rebellion of 1798. Belgium in the eighty-three years of 
her existence had spared not a man, a dollar, or an audible 
articulate thought for the freedom of Ireland. If instead 
of Belgium and France, Ireland had been invaded, what 
help would Ireland have received from one or other of 
these countries? Neither interest nor gratitude nor yet 
kinship called for a single Irishman to fight in the war. 
No power could take, and no power has been able to take, 
a single Irish national to fight in France against his free 
will. But Irishmen thought that if Germany won, Bel- 
gium would become what they " mourned in Ireland, a 
nation in chains." The fight seemed to be one of justice 
against might for the freedom of small nationalities. In 
such a fight, " Ireland," said Professor T. M. Kettle, 
who fell at Guinchy, " had a duty not only to herself but 
to the world . . . and whatever befell, the path 
taken must be the path of honor and justice." Concern- 
ing the number of Irishmen who took this vouched-for 
path of duty before America entered the war, Mr. John 
Redmond, JVL P., wrote: 



1 Glories of Ireland, Washington, D. C, 1914, p. 122. 
1 De Quincey loc. cit, p. 124. 

56 



From Ireland, according to the latest official statistics, 173,772 
Irishmen are serving in the navy and army. . . . Careful in- 
quiries made through the churches in the North of England 
and in Scotland, and from other sources, show that, in addition, 
at least 150,000 sons of the Irish race, most of them born in Ire- 
land, have joined the colors in Great Britain. It is a pathetic 
circumstance that these Irishmen in non-Irish regiments are for- 
gotten except when their names appear in the casualty lists. 

Adding to these the other young men of Ireland who, 
compelled by the economic conditions at home to seek 
elsewhere the means to exist, had emigrated to Canada, 
Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South 
Africa, and who had enlisted in their adopted countries, 
Mr. Redmond estimated that there were " more than half 
a million Irishmen with the colors" ("Ireland on the 
Somme," London, 1917, pp. 3-8). This number, 500,000, 
represents about one-tenth of the Irish-born outside this 
country : and they fought as volunteers. They took the 
indicated path to justice and went to war as Irish " Inter- 
national Nationalists," believing that the greater freedom 
would include the less. Their number* exceeded the vol- 
unteers of any other land : proportionately they repre- 
sented an army of 11,000,000 Americans. They went to 
their graves in France and Gallipoli believing that the 
Irish issue in its international aspect was an integral part 
of the new international aspect of all national issues, the 
right to government only by the consent of the governed. 
The Irish from their unassailable position of racial detach- 
ment and material disinterestedness were the only people 
in the world who could give the Allied cause moral vindi- 
cation; and they gave it — without requiring England to 
consent immediately to withdraw from Ireland, without 



* According to the New Statesman, London, Nov. 30, 1918, Ireland's 
fighting quota in the Great War was greater than Japan's, South 
Africa's, New Zealand's, or Canada's. 

57 



fulfilling the world duty of obtaining a guarantee that the 
war would be waged in good faith. 

Graciously acknowledging the belligerent value of this 
international aspect of the Irish issue, Lord Kitchener, 
the British War Lord, wrote to the Dublin Viceregal 
Conference (1915): "Ireland's performance has been 
magnificent." " England is unworthy to kiss the hem of 
Ireland's garment," wrote the English litterateur, Chester- 
ton, moved by the spectacle of a subject nation, volun- 
tarily fighting for international freedom alongside its 
oppressor. " Whatever the future may have in store, 
the British people will never forget the generous blood of 
the sister nation which has been shed on so many hard- 
fought battlefields," said the London Daily Telegraph, 
March 18, 1916. 

The war report of a subject nation in an imperial war, 
is published when to publish it is useful ; and is altered 
or suppressed, when necessary, for the benefit of the 
Empire. The significance of the record may not have 
varied : but the accounting is in the hands of the imperial 
bookkeepers : there are no auditors : the report is pub- 
lished by those who compile it for their own ends. Hence, 
although England's gratitude to the sister nation of 
Ireland was still ringing in men's ears, although, too, the 
survivors of the 500,000 Irish were still fighting abroad 
for international freedom, from the day (Easter, 1916) 
when the Irish felt compelled to wrest from England a 
guarantee of good faith, to fight in Ireland, too, in the 
name of right against might, in the name of the freedom 
of small nationalities, of the cause of international justice, 
the war report of the Irish was " Pigotted " in the press 
which England controlled throughout the world. And a 

58 



grateful England shot as felons Pearse and his fellow- 
poets and seers, condoned the murder of Sheehy Skeffing- 
ton and others, imprisoned Countess Markiewicz, Pro- 
fessors MacNeill and De Valera, and a thousand more, 
hanged then libeled Casement, placed an army of occupa- 
tion in Ireland, put the country under martial law, and 
gave full imperial recognition to the subject nation of 
Ireland before the silent but comprehending gaze of the 
suffering people of Belgium. Prior to the revolution of 
1916 there had been lacking an international standard by 
which to test the solicitude of England for the freedom 
of small nationalities: a lack which the revolution sup- 
plied. Ireland measured England's avowed cause by that 
standard : and then unaided continued the fight for small 
nationalities on the Irish front : a front to which the 
recent armistice was not extended. 

When America entered the war the Irish-born here felt 
that President Wilson had made holy again the Allied 
cause; had made the Irish issue once more an inalienable 
part of the international aspect of all national issues. 
They felt that it was the duty of everyone in America to 
fight for the freedom of all, for the freedom for which 
America's President had pledged his word. Cobelligerent 
aliens* who were called in the draft then possessed the 
right to claim exemption as aliens. The following per- 
centages, computed from the Provost Marshal General's 
Report (Appendix 33a) show the fashion in which this 
duty was accepted by the nationals of the several co- 
belligerent aliens. The percentages of the alien co- 
belligerents called who waived exemption and were 
accepted are as follows : 

59 



Ireland 30.4 

Belgium 24.4 

Scotland 24.2 

England 22.5 

Wales 22.0 

Servia 21.7 

Canada 21.0 

France 19.4 

Italy 16.8 

Alexander of Russia sought and received no guarantees 
from England : and experienced the Congress of Vienna. 
Ireland sought and received no guarantees from England, 
and is now the only nation in the civilized world that is 
still being actively subjugated by an imperial Power. 
America sought and received no guarantees from Eng- 
land, and the consequences are yet unrevealed. 

But certain dominant English statesmen now openly 
oppose the principles they formerly loudly professed or 
tacitly accepted and for which this war was fought. The 
British Coalition Government were elected on a plat- 
form antagonistic to the Wilson principles of the new 
world-order. The Populo Romano (Dec. 4) published 
that Italy had joined England and France in an entente. 
The Allied Premiers have met, have secretly deliberated 
and publicly made announcement of their agreement. To 
at least this extent plain people are now forewarned. 
Analogous anticipatory secret deliberations, from which 
Russia was excluded, occurred at the end of the Russo- 
Turkish war in 1878, but it was only when the Peace 
Congress of Berlin was far advanced, and when by long 
preparatory maneuvering the way had been cleared for 
the announcement, that Europe was permitted to learn of 
the bargain made prior to the public Peace Congress, the 

60 



bargain by which England in return for the long-coveted 
Island of Cyprus, guaranteed Turkey yirtual integrity. 
Already tentative divisions of territory have been publicly 
and authoritatively suggested in the manner of the Con- 
gress of Vienna, in the manner of the Congress of Berlin. 
America has been party neither to these anticipatory 
deliberations nor to these munition mongers' suggestions. 
America's President seems to be alone at the Peace Con- 
gress 

spea'king for friends of humanity in every nation and of every 
program of liberty . . . for the silent mass of mankind every- 
where who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak 
their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to 
have come upon the persons and homes they hold most dear? 

He has gone to uphold the principles and policies for 
which he led Americans to spend their lives, their honor, 
and their possessions. The seclusion of serried cordons 
of armed guards may surround the Conference; and its 
diplomacy may be shrouded by a censored press. But 
plain people everywhere will know how to judge the 
President's progress. There is one tested standard and 
only one by which the Allied cause may be judged, a 
standard by which every principle President Wilson has 
enunciated may be measured, a standard by which the 
present may be weighed with the past and the future may 
be estimated — the standard of Ireland. For, first, there 
can be no " absolute freedom of the seas outside of terri- 
torial waters, alike in peace and in war," without the free- 
dom of Ireland : secondly, there can be no "removal, so far 
as is possible, of all economic barriers," without the free- 
dom of Ireland : thirdly, there can be no " adequate guar- 
antees given and taken that national armaments will be 

61 



reduced to the lowest point consistent with safety," with- 
out the freedom of Ireland : fourthly, there can be no 
" general association of nations formed under specific 
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees 
of political independence and territorial integrity in great 
and small States alike," without the freedom of Ireland : 
and lastly, there can be no moral application of " the 
principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and 
their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety 
with one another whether they be strong or weak," with- 
out the freedom of Ireland. " Unless this principle be 
made its foundation no part of the structure of interna- 
tional justice can stand." Hence, by his own standard as 
well as by the standard of plain people everywhere. 
President Wilson must seek first the freedom of Ireland 
and all things else shall be added unto him. 

Belgium a nation again is music to Irish ears. The 
free soil of France affords at least a grave worthy of the 
freemen of Ireland. The liberation of Poland gives glad- 
ness nowhere greater than in Ireland. Even from the 
waters of Babylon, Ireland welcomes the Jew to Zion. 
For Ireland, though fated to be the symbol and shield of 
empire, has faith in her freedom. She knows how to 
fight and pray, till the day of empires shall pass, till 
freedom shall come to the latest of nations, shall come 
even unto the last, when an Ireland free shall be given 
to the peoples as a sign that a message 2,000 years old, 
the message of peace and good-will on earth, has been 
heard and heeded by men. 



62 



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